If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Here’s the newish Tesco ad (sorry, I’ve been away, so its launched kind of passed me by):

My first thought was ‘Lurpak’: some lovely shots of food, a celebration of a actually giving a shit about food, normal people using food to make other food, a voiceover that explains how amazing and important food is…

Of course it’s tonally different(ish): this is a bit more middle of the country, appealing to people with a Fab ice lolly as much as food thermometer, but there are still plenty of food porn shots to make you think of a certain brand of premium butter (maybe that’s how/why Wiedens won the pitch).

And I guess the strategy is a bit more obvious than where we’ve been before: people think Tesco is a pile ’em high purveyor of exceedingly cheap kids clothes, books, toasters etc., so let’s zig a bit and remind everyone that we actually sell, y’know… food. And we care about food, because we’ve shown some lovely food lovingly shot (we also sell the Basic range so we don’t care that much about food, but we’re very big and we have to cater to the less well-off and all that).

It’s pretty likeable, but I think I was expecting a little more from the first big-ass brand ad of this client/agency collaboration. Tesco went to W&K and got a nice W&K ad, nothing more, nothing less. When the Christmas work came out there was a sense that it was a bit so-so because the agency hadn’t really had time to bed down the relationship. Now it feels a little like this is it. And that’s fine, but it ain’t going to Grrr us into starry-eyed affection.

PS: small point in the VO: ‘It’s not just fuel; something to fill a hole’ seems at odds with it’s ‘the tummy tamer; the get-up-and-go giver’.

To be a good ad creative you have to be good at a lot of quite different things: generating ideas; having the tenacity to see them through; selling them in; choosing the talent to work with and getting best out of them; having a good and original aesthetic sense; being cocky enough to believe in your work; knowing how and when to take criticism on board etc…

Then, if you’re chosen to make the step up to CD, there’s all the above (because you don’t get chosen to be a CD unless you’ve had a pretty decent career as a creative first) plus an entirely different set of skills: managing a department; managing an agency; knowing how to select the best work to pursue; giving feedback in a way that empowers; hiring and firing effectively; keeping morale high etc…

Which is interesting because you can be brilliant at several of those things, but if you’re not somewhat proficient at all of them there’s going to be a point where the journey comes to an end.

I mention this because when I was reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth, it occurred to me that being good at lots of different things is also necessary when it comes to being an author. Mr. Roth writes very elegantly but he also knows how to structure a story and he can come up with so many brilliantly perceptive truths that he’s able to pepper them through his novels at the rate of a couple per page.

In all modesty I’m many, many miles away from his brilliance, but unless I work on every single way that I fall short I’ll never get anywhere near where he is.

And you can have authors who are very good at some, but not all of Roth’s list: Michael Crichton can plot well but doesn’t usually turn a beautiful sentence; Will Self can generate ideas but his stories aren’t that compelling. And both of those examples are fine, but they show that there isn’t just a single skill called ‘being an author’ (or copywriter, musician, artist, CD etc.). There are many, and often they are diverse and self-conflicting. If you want to drive a page turning plot you might end up compromising insight. If you want to be single-minded in your focus to make great ads you might annoy people in the process so they don’t want to work with you in future.

Perhaps the real skill is recognising what you you’re best at and juggling or improving everything else to fit in with that.

But of course, that’s just another very particular ability that you might not have.

What is the great American novel?

Sharks make movies better (thanks, J).

Scottish parenting (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvw3uUOjwto

YouTube’s worst-rated videos all in one handy place (thanks, J).

Great houses in films:

Vintage WTF (thanks, J).

Paris as a Chinese shithole (thanks, G).

B3TA punctuation challenge (thanks, J).

Well written Yelp reviews (thanks, G).

R/GA film titles retrospective:

Literary classics made accessible. Sort of (thanks, T).

Jerry Lewis’s unreleased holocaust movie (thanks, G).

The wonderful gif dance party (thanks, B).

The Smiths + Charlie Brown (thanks, V).

Louis CK ‘Of course… But maybe…’ (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjmzEEQUlE

Guillermo del Toro’s sketchbook (thanks, V).

‘Distorted rugs’ sounds boring, but this is cool (thanks, J).

It’s not often I write this, but: great poem (thanks, C):

Decapitated snake’s head attacks own body (thanks, J).

When I last wrote about looking for a new literary agent I mentioned that I had met with Darley Anderson, überagent of Lee Child and Martina Cole.

We left it with me promising to come up with a few more possible plots for the characters of Instinct and its sequel, Pursuit. Having done that to their satisfaction (it’s amazing the technothriller plots you can find by following The New Scientist on Twitter) I was sent a contract-type agreement which I duly signed and returned.

So far so good.

The next part of the process involved me sending my previous contracts (agent and publisher) to DA so they could dot the Ts of where they stood before offering Pursuit to publishers.

And that’s where it began to unravel.

The bottom line is that I have a book liked by a great agent, who was all ready to send it off. Unfortunately the c0mplications of my original contract mean that they can’t represent me. My terms with Penguin granted them 10% of the film rights to Instinct, and I have since been told by two agents that this clause makes it very difficult to get representation for a book related to Instinct. You see, if anyone wanted to make a film out of Pursuit they would have to negotiate in some way with Penguin, who kind of own a fraction of the film version rights of the characters. So if you’re an agent who wants to sell film rights you are having to deal with the buyer, the seller and the old publisher, as well as my ex-agent, who still retains his interest in Instinct.

Is that clear?

So now I have a choice: try to find an agent that doesn’t mind these complications (possible, considering Penguin have first option on an Instinct sequel. Most agents would love to sell a book to Penguin, even with the attendant difficulties), but maybe miss out on having DA represent me in future, something I would really like to happen.

Or leave Pursuit to rot somewhere, move on and write an unrelated thriller that Penguin would have no claim to (I’ve actually already written another novel that is in a completely different genre, but I’d like to build a thriller franchise and this other book feels a little one-offish).

I think I’ve lost most of you now, but thanks for making it this far.

If you are an agent or know anyone who is, and you understand the above problem, let me know in the comments. I’d love any advice.

Many of the creative side projects I feature on this blog have been at the request of the person behind the project. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless you want me to publicise your violently racist political party I’d be happy to tell the world what you get up to when you’re away from the office.

But occasionally I like to bring to your attention the work of someone in the industry despite the fact that they have not asked me to.

My friend Emer Stamp, erstwhile ECD of A&E/DDB and brand new mother of the beautiful Willem, has written an absolutely brilliant kids book, The Unbelievable To Secret Diary Of Pig (I can’t remember when it comes out, but thanks to Amazon you can just pre-order it and wait. She sent me a real copy so it does exist).

When she first came up with it she sent me a copy for my kids to read and they absolutely loved it. It’s so well written: heartbreaking, funny and completely original (did I mention that she’s an art director by trade?), and adults will warm to it to the same extent as their kids.

I know this all sounds like some kind of paid-for plug or favour for a mate, but it’s neither of those things. I’m pretty certain Emer would blush at my complimentary words because she’s that kind of person, but if modesty prevents her shouting from the rooftops about her excellent book I’m delighted to do it for her.

For those of you that don’t live in London, the lives of the ‘greatest’ people who lived in this fair city are commemorated by blue circular plaques that are attached to the houses they lived in. Regular readers will know that I can’t grace my blog with pictures, so here’s an explanatory YouTube clip:

Several years ago I noticed that I had very rarely heard of the people featured in the plaques. For every Jimi Hendrix there’s a few dozen Ira Aldridges, Thomas Arnes or George Basevis. The more I noticed this the more it dawned on me that our lives are utterly ephemeral. Even if you are one of the most celebrated people of your lifetime there is a very good chance that an university graduate with a few decent A-levels and more than a little curiosity about life in general will not have heard of you in any way. Not ‘Oh, hang on… She rings a bell’. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkiss.

And those are the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. If you applied that criteria to this industry I’d have thought no more than a couple of pure advertising people (as opposed to people who first worked in the ad game then went on to direct movies) would make the grade (I’m talking about Hegarty and Abbott). So if you’d like to be not-really-remembered by the vast majority of people who have lived in your country, you’d have to either build one of the biggest and/or best agencies of the last fifty years, and create a shedload of award-winners along the way. Juan Cabral will not be getting a blue plaque unless he returns to ‘adland’ and builds up some shop into fifty years worth of brilliance. And even then, probably not, because I might have neglected to mention that neither Sir Hegs or Lord Abbott actually has a blue plaque, and as blue plaques take three years to happen after shortlisting and have now been suspended through lack of funding, they almost certainly never will have.

So embrace the minuscule blip your presence on this earth will create. No one beyond your friends and family will give the tiniest toss a toss about you while you’re alive, and after you’re gone that number will dwindle to the square root of fuck-all. And that’s fine. It is the case for all but the smallest percentage of us. If you think anyone will give a shit about Vampire Weekend or Colin Farrell in 100 years time (when the planet will be under the water generated by the melting of the polar ice caps anyway) you are unfortunately quite wrong.

So what’s the point? Well, at times like this I like to call on Dead Poets Society:

Keating: “Seize the day. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Why does the writer use these lines?

Charlie: Because he’s in a hurry.

Keating: No. Ding! Thank you for playing anyway. Because we are food for worms, lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die… To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

Perhaps it could be bigger and brighter than the kind of thing that gets you a blue plaque. You could start here.

Interesting interview with Woody Allen here.

The quote that stood out for me is:

I never see a frame of anything I’ve done after I’ve done it. I don’t even remember what’s in the films. And if I’m on the treadmill and I’m surfing the channels and suddenly Manhattan or some other picture comes on, I go right past it. If I saw Manhattan again, I would only see the worst. I would say: “Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I could have done this. I should have done that.” So I spare myself.

Whenever I’ve read that from an actor/writer/director I’ve found it hard to believe, after all how can you improve your work if you don’t take a look at what you did to see how you could eliminate the faults for next time? Obviously that’s not been a great problem for Woody (although I’d say he still has yet to make a better film than Manhattan), so my theory must be bullshit, mustn’t it?

Well, if we think about Woody’s assertion a little longer it’s somewhat disingenuous. He’s obviously seen the finished version of Manhattan, or something very close to it, dozens of times. During the editing process alone he must have spend months watching it come together, and when that was over he must have seen it so many more times in the rest of the post-production process and in screenings to studio execs etc. So he might not continue to watch it years afterwards but he’s had the opportunity to analyse his work in great detail.

I suspect that his reluctance to return to his earlier work has more to do with its context. He made Manhattan about 35 years ago, so he was a different person making a different work for a different time and a different audience. In many ways the benefits of revisiting the work of 1979 would be counter-productive and possibly damaging. Some of us like to look at our old school photos because it brings back memories of a happy time; others find it a torture to be reminded of the crappy haircuts and sophomoric attempts at sophistication.

From my point of view I occasionally take a copy of Instinct down from the shelf and have a flick through. That’s mainly because I still get pleasure from acknowledging that I actually wrote a proper novel, and that Penguin decided printing a phrase like ‘the world’s most pointless erection’ was a good idea. But I don’t think I learn much from the experience, after all I’ve moved on a bit from the person who wrote that in 2009, and I certainly don’t get anything out of re-reading a plot that I spent 40-50 drafts improving.

So I can see where Woody’s coming from, but what about advertising? For a shortish period of time you might have little choice about experiencing your work as it graces the real world. I suppose you can turn away from poster sites and switch off the TV, but the chances of seeing your ad work by accident years later are pretty slim. Also, saying that you can’t bear to look at your ads after they’re finished is a bit daft: you need to see them in their natural media environment to judge them properly. Watching a DPS coming together on a Mac screen is miles away from turning a page in a newspaper to see how your work stands out and learning how impactful and tempting to read it might be.

Besides, unlike Manhattan, it’ll almost certainly be forgotten a few seconds later.

Bass players’ basses replaced with dogs (thanks, J).

How they made the first scene of Apocalypse Now (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye79NEUxVM0

David Camerporn (vaguely NSFW. Thanks, G).

How to speak with a British accent (thanks, W):

Ice Ice Baby sung by the movies (thanks, J and G):

How to be outraged on the internet (thanks, W).

Hotel graffiti (thanks, J).

Great ‘missed connections’ story and comments (thanks, G).

Here come more comedians in cars getting coffee:

Writers and their typewriters (thanks, T).

Simple writing tips (thanks, G).

Which urinal to pick? (Thanks, J.)

Led Zep videos (thanks, T).

Fight Club trivia (thanks, G).

Brilliant Louis CK quotes (thanks, J).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjssdNNzP0

My knowledge of this started with a flurry of positive Facebook and Twitter updates. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘a new Marmite ad that’s up there with the classics‘.

Then info came in of the 278 complaints the ad has received. Apparently people are offended that it seems a bit like a series of real situations where people bust bastards for neglecting children and/or animals.

I wrote quite recently about the nature of offence, so as far as I’m concerned those people can go and fuck themselves up the chuff pipe, but at least a couple of amusing things can be found woven into the fabric of these complaints:

First, one of the problems cited was that the ad was in ‘poor taste’. How wonderfully appropriate.

Then the RSPCA said it understood that “animal lovers are concerned on our behalf. We plan to talk to the makers of Marmite about how we can work together on animal welfare.”

That I cannot wait to see. The only situation I’ve ever heard of that links animals to Marmite involved an unsavoury rumour about a bloke at my school who used to put Marmite on his bollocks and let his dog… You get the idea.

For my part I’m going to have to go against my headline and say that I neither love it nor hate it. I think it’s quite nice.

But never mind what I think. My brain is still addled by the fact that I’m sitting on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. What do you, the poor, downtrodden wage slaves of the advertising world, think of this ad and its attendant issues?

From George Saunders:

Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).

And I intend to respect that tradition.

Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?”  And they’ll tell you.  Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked.  Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.

So: What do I regret?  Being poor from time to time?  Not really.  Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?”  (And don’t even ASK what that entails.)  No.  I don’t regret that.  Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked?  And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months?  Not so much.  Do I regret the occasional humiliation?  Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl?  No.  I don’t even regret that.

But here’s something I do regret:

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class.  In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.”  ELLEN was small, shy.  She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore.  When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing).  I could see this hurt her.  I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear.  After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.  At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.”  And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved.  That was it.  No tragedy, no big final hazing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that?  Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it?  Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her.  I never said an unkind word to her.  In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.

But still.  It bothers me.

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. 

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.  Reservedly.  Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope:  Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

Now, the million-dollar question:  What’s our problem?  Why aren’t we kinder?

Here’s what I think:

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian.  These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).

Now, we don’t really believe these things – intellectually we know better – but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.

So, the second million-dollar question:  How might we DO this?  How might we become more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less delusional, etc., etc?

Well, yes, good question.

Unfortunately, I only have three minutes left.

So let me just say this.  There are ways.  You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter.  Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend;  establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition – recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us.

Because kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include…well,everything.

One thing in our favor:  some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age.  It might be a simple matter of attrition:  as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish – how illogical, really.  We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality.  We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be.  We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now).  Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving.  I think this is true.  The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.  YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE.   If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment.  You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit.  That’s one reason your parents are so proud and happy today.  One of their fondest dreams has come true: you have accomplished something difficult and tangible that has enlarged you as a person and will make your life better, from here on in, forever.

Congratulations, by the way.

When young, we’re anxious – understandably – to find out if we’ve got what it takes.  Can we succeed?  Can we build a viable life for ourselves?  But you – in particular you, of this generation – may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition.  You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can….

And this is actually O.K.  If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously – as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers.  We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable.  “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up.  Speed it along.  Start right now.  There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really:selfishness.  But there’s also a cure.  So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.  Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.  That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been.  Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s.  Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been.  I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful.

Congratulations, Class of 2013.

I wish you great happiness, all the luck in the world, and a beautiful summer.